Governor Cuomo's self-proclaimed and rather smug image of being above and beyond the influence of special interests took a serious hit last week over his infatuation with creating a casino industry for New York.

Scandal is too strong a description, but deep embarrassment and taint are not. The signs of furious backpedaling from a previously giddy association with the Malaysian gambling giant Genting, which already holds the VLT franchise at Aqueduct Raceway, was a sure sign Cuomo and his staff were frantically aware they were heading down a dark alley with the wrong crowd.

We now learn that six months ago the New York Gaming Association, a lobbying group composed of the state's racino owners and allied interests associated with video lottery terminals at those racinos — including Genting — donated $2 million to the Committee to Save New York, the lobbying and advocacy group created at Cuomo's suggestion before he was elected. The committee was formed to promote Cuomo's agenda and to get his word out. It is, as a consequence, also a portal into Cuomo's inner sanctum. Money talks. Shortly after the donation was made, which the public knew nothing of at the time, the Committee to Save New York out of the blue began advocating a constitutional amendment to expand casino gambling in the state beyond Indian gaming parlors.

At the same time, and equally full-blown from the brow of Zeus, the governor decided casinos would save our world, and Genting was the outfit that would do it by giving the state the largest convention center in the world in Queens. Curiously, in the voluminous campaign books he had prepared before his election, casinos were not a major factor in the various economic development schemes.

But, boy, did that change overnight. He wrote an op-ed piece in praise of casinos' role in economic development, a mind-boggling concept. Genting's convention complex was a centerpiece of his State of the State address. The governor announced a $4 billion convention center and casino at Aqueduct in partnership with Genting, lauded the benefits of this public-private partnership and said it would cost the taxpayers zero.

Last week, all that crashed. During a news conference, the governor was cool to the point of hostile about the partnership, announcing that the deal with Genting was dead. He said — surprise, surprise — it added too many conditions. In addition, and without provocation, he called the way the nine racinos in the state are organized "a scandal" without providing much evidence of it, and stressed he was 100 percent opposed to the Gaming Association's contention that any casinos in the state should be placed where racinos already exist. The clear message he was sending was of distancing himself, and publicly biting the hand that fed him in terms of the Gaming Association.

It turns out, the governor tells us, that he became uncomfortable with the assurances Genting wanted to protect its investment in the public-private partnership. The opaque governor told us some, but not all, of the conditions Genting wanted to impose on the relationship, such as essentially a guarantee of exclusivity for the New York City market, should casinos come to pass in the state.

That, of course, is the dirty little secret of all these public-private partnerships that are suddenly the rage for revenue-strapped states. The private half of the arrangements wants to make money and get a competitive edge. The more money at risk, the more money they want to make, and that is not always in the taxpayers' best interest. The Cuomo crowd was naive to think otherwise going into that arrangement.

But back to the governor. It's irrelevant whether there was in fact influence peddling or impropriety, because the appearance of impropriety is all over the timing, the money, how the issue of gambling bloomed. The appearance has knocked Andrew Cuomo down a peg, and knocked him down hard. He is still a step or two above former governor David Paterson and the infinitely more tawdry and prolonged process of naming a VLT operator at Aqueduct, but the fact he could be mentioned in the same sentence on an ethical issue is testament to how serious this is.

Apart from common sense that this entire Genting/Gaming Association/embrace of casinos doesn't pass the sniff test, the number one clue that the governor and his staff realized how bad this looked, and how they needed to get out from under it and fast, was how they reacted. That was one bizarre news conference the governor held. He emphatically turned on those he had until recently praised. From the gaming association and racino owners to Genting itself. He even let poor James Featherstonhaugh hang out to dry.

Then there's also the unfortunate 2,200-word letter Richard Bamberger, Cuomo's communication director, sent to the New York Times responding to the donation revelation, singing the virtue of the Committee to Save New York, denying anything untoward occurred between money, influence and policy, praising the group for giving the governor's agenda a voice, and so on and so on. That's a letter more than twice the length of this column. All that tome did was signal that the Cuomo people felt vulnerable, and that they had a lot to explain.

This is one time where Cuomo's trademark opacity would have suited him best. Two terse sentences in strong language, denying any connection between donations and policy, would have more than sufficed and left us wondering, you know, as usual.